<p>b@r!um, I’m afraid that you keep on missing my general point–I’ve focused on specific examples (Greek mythology, 19th c. lit, whatever) because, at least as I’ve understood it, you and others have been arguing that these “older” fields do not help us with contemporary issues/are irrelevant/turn students off, when my only point in all of this is that I don’t think you can effectively or meaningfully study contemporary ________________ unless you are acquainted with what preceded it. That’s why I’ve spent time discussing the connections between Greek mythology or 19th c. lit and the understanding of contemporary religion or the individual’s aesthetic judgment–it’s not that I’m arguing to prioritize those specific bodies of knowledge, it’s just that I’m trying to show how we cannot fully understand some contemporary things unless we also understand these older things. </p>
<p>I would say that giving students information about contemporary literature, art, politics, music, etc. and leading them to think that they have truly mastered a subject area without providing them with some of the necessary historical background to understand how those things came about is very dangerous. I’m going to try to replicate a very funny outburst from one of my colleagues who teaches contemporary US politics, who said, “God save me from [alliterative curse word] freshmen who think they know something because they managed to get a 4 on the AP exam. They are impossible to teach because they think they know everything, but none of them know [curse word] about the actual foundations of anything and so all their answers are either wrong or as shallow as a puddle.” (The wording’s not exact, but the curses and the phrase “shallow as a puddle” definitely were there!)</p>
<p>As I’ve said repeatedly, I don’t know how to fix this in K-12–I know that there is more material out there to be learned than can be possibly learned and I know that we do have to somehow prioritize. I know that we can’t just start teaching literature/history/art “from the beginning” because we’ll never get to “now,” and that’s not OK or rewarding for the students. I understand that we may need to use contemporary lenses to help students begin the process of learning about the history of literature/art/etc. and why it matters. I absolutely understand that the K-12 system is not effectively set up to teach this material in the most effective way, and I understand why so many students get so frustrated. I myself did not really being to appreciate the curricular foundation I"d been given in high school until I started talking college courses that allowed me to bring multiple disciplines together in a synthetic way. I simply don’t think that responding to the problem by privileging the contemporary without acknowledging its foundations is the answer because I think educating in that way creates a dangerous arrogance about knowledge.</p>